Lincoln film project caught up in state budget mess

Tuesday

A looming state government shutdown could cause scheduling quandaries for the makers of a film about Abraham Lincoln that is to start shooting this week in Springfield.

A looming state government shutdown could cause scheduling quandaries for the makers of a film about Abraham Lincoln that is to start shooting this week in Springfield.

When finished, the roughly 20-minute interpretive film will be shown to visitors at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site at 413 S. Eighth St., said Tim Townsend, the site’s historian and coordinator of the film project. The high-definition production, with a budget of about $200,000, should be ready for public viewing by April, he said.

Producer/director Josh Colover and his Aperture Films production company are scheduled to shoot scenes for the film throughout central Illinois, Townsend said. They will start work on Wednesday.

In addition to the Lincoln Home site, which the National Park Service runs, the filmmakers plan to shoot at the Old State Capitol, the Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices and Lincoln’s New Salem near Petersburg.

That’s where the potential for trouble lies. Those three sites are overseen by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, a state government entity. If state government has no new budget in place by Wednesday, state historic sites could begin to close.

“We’re, at this point, just kind of planning for the best, that everything will work out,” Townsend said. “But (we’re) also coming up with alternative plans.”

Under the present version of the film company’s schedule, crews will film at the Old State Capitol on the second and third days of shooting, at the law offices on the fourth and fifth days, and at New Salem on the eighth day.

“What we may have to do is rework that schedule,” Townsend said. “If they were to shut down on Aug. 1, for example, then we would do all non-state stuff first in the hope that by the time we finished at those other locations, then we’d be good to go at the state facilities.”

The film’s other planned locations, none of them operated by state government, are the Elijah Iles House, the Great Western Depot, the Hoogland Center for the Arts — all in Springfield — and the Monticello Railway Museum near Champaign.

“It’s a challenge for us, certainly, as far as this film project goes,” Townsend said of the uncertainty caused by the state budget situation. “Hopefully, the visitor that sees the final film would never know that this happened.”

Adriana Colindres can be reached at (217) 782-6292 or adriana.colindres@sj-r.com.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.